ZsnexBox 3.3


What's new:

-Fixed crashes related to running out of RAM in HD modes. You should be able to use any skin in 720p or 1080i and have no crashes ever. If you are an HD user that has been waiting to upgrade, then now is the time.

-Several (too many to list) HD GUI fixes. If you are an HD user, you will be pleased at the new tweaks.

-Added 720p and 1080i versions of all the skins. If you are going to run in 720p or 1080i, don't try to configure everything yourself (it takes FAR too long). Change to a 720p or 1080i skin and this will setup the GUI for you. This method will only require minor tweaks for your TV.

-The HD setting is now applied from the skin ini file.

-Removed a lot of dead code.

-Removed the TV calibration option since I assume it's not really being used by anyone. This frees up more RAM.

-The database files are loaded/unloaded on the fly to free more RAM

-Fixed the virtual keyboard to display correctly in 720p and 1080i.

-Added larger font sizes for the game guide and GUI (the game guide was too small to read in 720p and 1080i. This is fixed)

-Loading game guides 1MB and up should work now in HD resolutions (but don't go too crazy with the file sizes).

Notes:
There are a few RAM related issues I need to fix, but I wanted to get this version out. 3.0 and up were unusable in HD resolutions. Now that's fixed.

Install:

Extract and copy all files and folders to your Xbox hard drive. Run "default.xbe" to start. Delete your old ZsnexBox.ini and Path.ini files if upgrading.

Hm no issues with HD resolutions here pre-3.3, TV calibration will be missed I used it to make widescreen into fullscreen, no squishy fat characters

No Video Calibration! Ahh, may have to stick with the old releases.
Nothing really usefull for non-HD users here.

Props man. ZsnexBox gets my vote for the best emu on the xbox.

Awesome, bro!

Looking forward to installing this on my system as soon as i get back in town.

Sorry for not getting back with you sooner, nes, on the HD res comment i made in the previous thread, but it seems that with an HDTV of your own you have solved all the HD problems.

THanks again...

I think you guys might be a little confused on what Video Calibration was.

Getting an HDTV in 2007 is like getting a VCR in 1981. There should be the option of video calibration to get rid of overscan. Every emulator and dash has it.

There is a size calibration. What i believe nes is referring to is the color calibration. And i agree that it was pretty much useless.

I love you NES! I haven't tried this new version yet but still I live you lol! Off to download.....

The calibration thingy that was removed I believe is the one which helps you adjust you're TV's sharpness, color, etc and not the screen size calibration option, it would be pointless to have that removed. It was broken in one version (3.0 I think), then got fixed and now its being removed altogether, which isn't really a problem since as NES said, I don't think it was really being used (well, I didn't really use it myself). TNX again NES!

The TV calibration that was removed is the color bar screen where you can adjust the contrast, brightness, and color bleeding. This can be done within most tv's anyway. It has nothing to do with resizing the display. I'd be surprised if even 3 people ever actually used it to do anything (which is why I got rid of it).

Out of curiosity is there a way to ever output to 1080p? I know the XBox doesn't exactly support it but since SNES emulators don't take up much CPU, is that something that technically can even happen?

Thanks again NES, you're the best.

Xbox's video hardware cant do it, even if it is powerful enough.

OMG i think i soiled myself but this sounds alsome i checked out the game guide thing you added every time i tried to use it would lock up my xbox but its still a good i idea i hope it works for me in this version. btw keep up the great work.

l8z
Triggz Out

Just installed 3.3 and am sure it will be wonderful on my HD plasma... but alas I can't try it until I get back to my apartment in a couple of months... But anyways Thanks for the new version.

Out of curiosity... this has been something I've been wondering for a while... In video settings, what exactly does the "Old graphics Mode 2" do? I'm guessing something along the lines of making things look more accurate compared to the original system look.... If this is the case, If I were to have this setting "ON" should I have everything else (filters etc.) disabled? Also is there a link somewhere to maybe a brief description for the available filters? Thats not really important, I was just wondering though, most of the time when I play with those settings i hardly notice any difference at all... I usually stick with the default Bilinear Superscale2x settings but recently switched to Trilinear... haha probably for no better reason than the fact that "Tri" sounds better than "Bi" (3 being more than 2 and all).

sorry if u interpret this as spam...

Hi Snes, happy that you are still working on this beauty. I have a big problem with the latest release though. My games don't start anymore. Not one of them. I have made a fresh install of the emulator and have also deleted the savegame to make sure everything is alright.

Do you have an idea what this could be?

Thanks

Your "games" don't start or "ZsnexBox" doesn't start? I assume you mean ZsnexBox. If that's the case, sounds like you have an invalid Path.ini.

Hey I am guessing that when you try to play a rom, it never loads, but instead freezes up the xbox... This same thing happened to me. However I got everything to work again. Although I am not sure Exactly what it was that I did that actually fixed it... Like you i reinstalled everything, including ftping the roms from my computer back to my xbox... initially i just moved the roms from a diff location on my xbox... after this step it didn't work for me either so I looked at the zsnexbox 3.3 folder contents compared to zsnexbox 3.2 and i noticed a couple of folders that were missing... so I ftped them over, I have no idea how this would actually fix anything since all the folders that were mising were all empty with "placeholder.txt" inside.... but anyhow after I did this i randomly chose to try a different skin and somehow someway it worked again...

Again so thats EXACTLY what I did and mine works again, but again who knows what it was that actually fixed it... hope this helps... a little?

@nes: ZsnesXbox loads fine, but when i try to start a game then my xbox freezes. I think competes2win has the solution as he seems to have had the same problem.

@competes2win: this sounds exactly like my problem...hmmm, strange thing. Will try your suggestion and ftp over everything again. Thanks anyway.

If you are missing any of the folders (like sram, ini, artwork, etc...), it could easilly crash. Also, you sure your games are valid SNES games?

and don't forget to ftp all the folders that are present in 3.2 and not in 3.3.. because I think maybe this is what helped? I'm sure nes will eventually come on to say a sophisticated reason as to where we went wrong and how we stumbled upon a solution....

wow i totally posted w/o realizing that nes beat me to the punch... sorry

What folders are missing from 3.3 that were in 3.2?

First of all thanks Nes6502 for porting this emu, I'm having the crash issue too but I think I have located the problem, I believe it crashes when you try to load roms from external media (network, dvd) and the roms have names that fatx can't handle I.E. longer than 40 chars or with special symbols. I'd like to be able to resolve this problem cause all my roms are in dvd and my HD is full(I saw in the help that this is the last release). Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

There is no network support, so loading from a remote drive is not possible.

Your ROMs must be fatx compliant even if loading from a DVD. ZsnexBox uses the names of the game to create the sram, cheat, etc... files/folders on the Xbox hard drive. If they are not fatx compliant, this will fail and cause a crash.

Yes, you're right there's no network support, I just assumed that if there were It would fail too. Well thanks, I guess I'll have to stick to what I have.

I'm having the crashing problem as well. When you select the game to play is where it is freezing at. You hit the A button and it just locks up instead of loading the game, requiring a restart of the xbox. I did a clean install of ZsnexBox 3.3 and am using the 720p video setting if that helps.

nes, are you going to make the default emu icon those ones that the guy made in the thread you were looking for?

Yup

@illusion456
Sounds like you are trying to launch a game that is not a correct SNES ROM, not fatx compliant, or not a valid zip file. Have you verified the rom is good by launching it in xSnes9x or on your PC?

Yes the roms are good, but after doing some tinkering around I've figured out it has something to do with the Path.ini .. in the FAQ it talked about a " \ " that shouldn't be there at the end of the path values. So I looked at the Path.ini and every one of them had the slash at the end (was like that when I downloaded it). After removing all of the slashes, all of the games work properly now. Also, if I set it to usePathINI=0 , this solves the freezing issue as well. Hope this isn't too confusing

Update - After toying around, I found that the problem is exactly what competes2win and nes6502 said about the folders not being present. The folders "cheats", "rumble", "sram", "save", and "bookmarks" that the Path.ini refers to were not there, and after creating them, all of my games now work. Thanks for the help!

Exactly, it's the folders. After checking it again i noticed that these folders don't get uploaded to the xbox because they are empty. Either create them directly on the xbox with your ftp program or just put an empty file like placeholder.txt in each folder before uploading them to the xbox. Problem solved.

By the way this new version works like a charm. Probably the best version you ever made and the best emulator for xbox. Thanks again Nes

You must have the "\" at the end of all the paths. The FAQ is outdated. It worked because you set usepathINI to 0. It's creating all the folders on E:\ZsnexBox. Your problem likely was you ftpd over ZsnexBox and some folders didn't transfer (because they were empty)



Oops. This is what happens when you rush to get a release out. Minor things get overlooked.

"Install: Extract and copy all files and folders to your Xbox hard drive. Run "default.xbe" to start. Delete your old ZsnexBox.ini and Path.ini files if upgrading."

-- Can you run this directly off the dvd without manually copying / ftp'ing to the hard drive? If not, is it possible to add an install routine to do this automatically? (check if the folder exists...read the version number from a txt file... and command shell to copy the files... if the version is old or doesn't exist.)

Yes, you can run this off a DVD. You must first open the Path.ini and change usepathINI=1 to usePathINI=0 before you burn it.

Well i tried this out man these games fly now they play like 8x faster and i turned up everything wow the code must have been massively optimized. The light gun games play allot better also the gun don't lag on the screen as much when you have the cross hair on its a hella lot smoother. and most games dont have and skipped frames and the frame rate hasn't dropped on a single game I've played. Awsome work NES.

Keep up the alsome work
Triggz Out

You're exactly right, that was the problem. It works GREAT now though! Everything from the graphics in all of the menus to the game play, all of it is completely outstanding. Great job on this nes6502! Thank you for all of the time that you've put into this for all of us!

Zsnexbox 3.4 - New option in this release renames all of your roms, guides and pictures, puts them in their proper folders, and zips everything up for you.

Zsnexbox 3.5 - The first XBox app to feature a defragger for your HDD, increasing performance even more!

Zsnexbox 3.6 - New version adds an option to do your taxes and e-file in the background while you are playing FFII in hi-def.

Zsnexbox 3.7 - Works for you all day so you have more time for retro gaming.

Zsnexbox 3.8 - Launches SkyNet into orbit, and dooms all of mankind. But it is still a damned fine emulator.

lol wtf

LOL, great!

especially version 3.8, that explains many things i didn't get when i watched the movie, now i know that Nes is the guy who started it all...

Thanks mate, this is the best!!


BTW:
That pesky Breath of Fire II freeze bug is still there (but there's probably Zsnes at fault). But it's easily solved by fiddeling around with the audio settings.. Turns out Gaussian sound interpolation messes it up.. Use Cubic spine and it works perfectly

Bah, seems like I was a little too quick to post my last message..

Bof II still freezes and I can't edit my last post..

hello nes6502.
fantastic release, thank you for your hard work! my boys and I love this and it just brought a bunch life back to the ol' xbox

does this app work with with wireless controllers? i have 3 wireless controllers and once the app launches, the control stops (meaning you are stuck on the opening page and can not navigate). i rebooted, but this time having wired controllers plugged in instead and everything worked perfectly. the wireless ones work fine everywhere else, so i know they are not faulty.
is there any config setting i need to change to allow wireless controllers to work?

thanks again for the app!

Wow, this is an amazing app. Is there any way to reset the position of the screen if you've adjusted the size/position though during a game? I did and kinda messed it up, I was hoping I could move it back to default.

Sure. Just reload the GUI. Options->GUI Options->Skins I think

That worked perfectly, thanks! Great app by the way, you're a god among men.

Hey great emu. I think I was using the snes9x port before this and I just hated it. One suggestion though: netplay? My NES and Genesis emu's (they run on the xbox) have it built in but I would really like it for SNES.

I'm pretty sure that there will never be netplay support for the zsnexbox emulator... I was bored one day and read the entire FAQ page that you can read in the emulator, and I'm pretty sure nes said that net play won't ever be supported.

I was wondering about the "usePathINI=0" option what folders does it make and does it use the screen shots off the cd? if not how would i set it up just use "D:\artwork\Shots 1\" and not use the usepathini or not i kinda confused. but i don't have hdtv I've already setup my zsnexbox the way i like it. but any info would be nice thanks allot

btw while i took everything off my hdd i made a *.rar of my screen shots all of my roms still have the goodroms name these should work for alot of people. But this took me some hours to do today but i finshed it any one is welcome to them. Get them by clicking here.

I was wondering what would need to be changed to the older skins to make them usable in 3.0 and up?

cause my favorite skin of all time does not seem to work with V3.3 ;_;

Edit : and show Zipfile contents does not seem to work? i turned it on but it still only shows the zip name and not that of the rom thats stored inside the zip.

I wasn't around to voice my appreciation for 3.2 and now this? Seriously man... great work. But you already know that. I haven't acquired your new builds, but I'm really looking forward to using FAQs on my bigscreen HDTV. Truely awesome.

I thought you quit making updates..... Can't stay away, can you?

Not sure about the zip file contents. I just tried it and it works fine for me. For example:

In the favorites browser it says: Joe & Mac 2 - Lost in the (54227)
And at the bottom it says: Joe & Mac 2 - Lost in the Tropics (U) (54227).mgd

I'm not sure about what would be needed to update the skins, but I doubt it's hard. I'll see if I can bring that skin up to current today or tommorow and I'll post on the forum.

As far as having the previews on the CD/DVD, it should work if you leave the Shots 1 path set to D:\Artwork\Shots1\

but this will not allow you to take new screenshots for this slot.